PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. XXXVil 



. We consider the early fishes as forming by no means the clearest 

 part of this narration ; but we are not without hope that the remark- 

 able fact of their high nervous system, and other points of supe- 

 riority, on which Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Miller have expatiated 

 straws to drowning controversialists may yet be explained on 

 some principle in entire conformity with that parity just spoken of 

 between the foetal history of an individual and the entire history of 

 creation. We can see some prospect of this result in the fact that 

 in the individual development, the organs subserving the functions 

 of animal life, make their appearance before those which subserve the 

 functions of vegetative life. As the nervous system belongs to the 

 former, it seems as if we were to expect, in a march of animals re- 

 presenting the stages of foatal development, that those possessing for 

 their order or family a superior nervous system should come first. 

 We do not say that such is the explanation of the mystery ; but we 

 think that a candid examination of such points in transcendental 

 physiology might, in the hands of such a man as Professor Owen, 

 lead to some interesting results, and probably of a cast favourable to 

 the development hypothesis. 



The chapter on Degradation is expected to tell against that hypo- 

 thesis, because it is assumed that the hypothesis necessarily inters 

 an unfailing advance in all the lines of life, whereas, in the explana- 

 tion presented in the Vestiges, allowance has, on the contrary, been 

 made for what may be called partial recessions, or what appear such, 

 under the influence of external circumstances. What is there set 

 forth is, that there have been decided developmental advances from one 

 grade of animal dignity to another, as from invertebrate to vertebrate, 

 ichthyic to reptilian, reptilian to ornithic and mammalian, and in 

 certain inferior gradations, all this under an inherent independent 

 impulse, but that in special points of organization, there was an 

 adaptability under the influence of external agencies though taking 

 effect through the medium of reproduction which had caused con- 

 siderable minor modifications, liable to be described as a degradation. 

 Thus, for example, some animals of the lizard order might resort to 

 a furtive life in the grass, and in time become better adapted to that 

 field of existence, the limbs shrinking up in the course of generations, 

 for want of exercise ; and when we see certain ophidians with the 

 mere remains of a pair of limbs dangling from the sides, but of no 

 use, do we not see something very like a penult stage of the very 

 process here hinted at ? This work has been proclaimed as anti- 

 scientific in its whole tendency, while that of Mr. Miller has been 

 somewhat officiously patronized and applauded on opposite grounds ; 

 but I humbly think that there is here something much more like a 

 scientific explanation of a natural fact, than in mystic allusions to a 

 state of "ever-sinking degradation" in animal life, as something 

 analogous to the history of a race which " long since separated into 

 two great classes that of the ' elect angels,' and that of ' angels 

 that kept not their first estate.' ' The reader will find in the text a 

 further explanation of these so-called degradations, not merely m 



